Roger Antoine Le Béhérec was born in Saigon, Vietnam, in 1953. In the winter semester of 1976/77, he enrolled in the Architecture program at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg (HFBK). However, he chose to pursue studies in Psychology at the University of Hamburg instead. His fields of interest were many, as he did attend seminars and lectures as a guest student in the then new film department with Professor Gerd Roscher (footnote: Roger Antoine Le Béhérec in an email to the author, April 23 2025). Le Béhérec later also returned to architecture and graduated from the Technische Fachhochschule Berlin in Architecture.1
But back to his interest in film making. Le Béhérec started a 12 month film training (Filmausbildung) at the Landesarbeitsgemeinschaft für praktische Filmarbeit Hamburg (LAG). For his graduation project, he created the roughly seven minute film Julia und Nina (1989), one of the altogether nine shorts for the episodic Mavi, Mavi 2 that is set at Hamburg’s central station. Le Béhérec’s film follows a young family: while the parents argue about their travel plans, their daughter Julia quietly slips away and begins to explore the station on her own. Along the way, the child meets a punk sitting on the stairs, talking about how no one seems to have time for anything anymore. A street musician, Nina, playing a saxophone, gives Julia a compass and teaches her how to use it. Later, an elderly man shows her a card trick right before her parents angrily pull her away.
Le Béhérec’s 1991 German-language, black-and-white short Dr. Deodor gained international attention and was screened at several festivals, including Internationale Kurzfilmtage Magdeburg in September 1991, Internationales Kurzfilmfestival Oberhausen 1992, and Festival International de Cine Documental y Cortometraje de Bilbao in November 1993.3 The six minute film was also listed in the program of Film Fest Gent in 1991.4 In April 1992, Le Béhérec was awarded the “Prix Du Conseil General De L'yonne” at the 6th Festival du Court Metrage Amateut et Semi-Professionnel in France.5 In Dr. Deodor, a young man visits a psychiatrist for excessive sweating. During the session, the man casually admits to having murdered his parents, not out of trauma or abuse, but simply because he always wanted to. The doctor, unable to find any psychological justification in the man's medical history, begins searching for a medication. Then another man enters the frame and with them, the film abruptly shifts into a deodorant commercial parody. The patient associates the smell from the deodorant with his parents and is triggered into murdering the doctor. In the final shot, the lighting shifts to a high-contrast, reminiscent of David Lynch’s 1977 Eraserhead, the young man smiles psychopathically to the camera, calmly repeating, “I really cannot stand this smell.”
In 1993, Le Béhérec directed Eine kleine alltägliche Tragödie (A Small Everyday Tragedy). The 8-minute film was awarded the “Grand Prix du Festival” at the 9th Festival International de Cinéma Non-Professionnel du Mesnil-le-Roi in 1994.6 In Eine kleine alltägliche Tragödie, a couple faces growing distance in their relationship and seeks help through therapy. After a series of dramatic moments at the psychotherapist’s office, they briefly reconnect, although the story ends with them falling back into old habits and emotional disconnection. Despite its simple motif and storyline, the film has an absurd tone mixed with what I would call Le Béhérec’s signature dark humor already apparent in his previous film, though in this case, the blend feels less entirely effective in my opinion, the backstory of the couple was rather bland and underdeveloped.
Le Béhérec’s films parody both the discipline and practitioners in psychology, reflecting his parallel career in this very field. Yet Le Béhérec’s professional versatility doesn’t stop here, as he later ventured into fashion design for men. In 2014, he founded RLB Fashion, creating texture and textile pattern designs for shirts, shorts and socks.7 The brand is based in Hamburg where Le Béhérec still lives and works today.
This text was published in November 2025.